MSE News: Over half would do a Jimmy Carr on tax, or worse

Pincher

LurkerTurnedPoster wrote: »

I hope not. I am about to go from a 2 litre engine, to a 1.8 litre engine.
Does anyone know how much I may save doing that please?

Engine size is not a factor.

I think they have been using carbon emission for VED for at least 15 years.

For company car benefit in kind, it's based on showroom price, which is why electric cars costing £28k before the £5k government subsidy is going to be a major fleet sale killer.

The new engines like FIAT's 0.9L TwinAir makes it more confusing. Fuel consumption and carbon emissions are nothing like the stated figures if you drive it hard, which is precisely what you do with a 0.9L .

LurkerTurnedPoster

Pincher, thank you for replying, I appreciate anyone taking the time. Do you mean to do with tax? I think I wrote on the wrong board didn't I? I am silly, I was wondering about fuel costs. You answered correctly, I just asked it all wrong.

John_Pierpoint

antrobus wrote: »

The fact that it is a subsidiary of the Swiss based Alliance Boots is no more indicative of 'tax avoidance' than the fact that ASDA is a subsidiary of the US based Walmart.

Chinese money transfer pricing.
If a company owns both the buyer and seller in a transaction it can "adjust" its prices to produce the profit somewhere else. (usually where taxes are lower).
OK HMRC will try to negotiate with the organisation - but its not law it is power politics.
30 - 40 years ago several companies pulled out of California, when that state introduced "sunshine" laws.
This came down to: we will analyse your group accounts and if you sell (say) 10% of turnover as sales in California, then California will expect to tax 10% of the total profit.

As someone, who in the 1970's was more than happy to work for a Swiss company, thus getting regular wage "increases" as the UK government devalued its fiat currency - and introduced laws forbidding pay rises and price rises :rotfl: I know why that country, once pretty well the poorest heap of mountains in Europe, was host to well paid white collar staff:

A. Central European location with good communications.
B. Stable democratic institutions and efficient government. (like Japan most things work reliably)
C. Low Taxes.
D. Banking secrecy and unobtrusive government and labour institutions.
E. Well educated multilingual workers, product of the education and military system.

Credit-Crunched

Q. Hello Mr x, I have a legal way to reduce your PAYE tax on your payslip from £800 down to £80, HMRC are aware of it and I will declare it all to you, this is in now way illegal.

do you answer

A. Great news I pay enough tax as it is

or

B. NO way, I feel the need to pay the maximum tax I can, this country treats the working man very fairly, cheap commuting costs are really helping me at the moment...


Anyone who says B is a liar!

I think the government should spend more time going after benefit frauds not trying to publicly assassinate a successful business man.

Politicians BROKE the law with CGT evasion and erroneous expenses so taking a lesson from them is kind of rich!

Gordon_the_Moron

I ask again, if you do not think what Jimmy Carr did should be legal ...

Why is it his fault and not the system's fault for allowing it?

John_Pierpoint

You have to realise that money can be switched about across borders, without going through banks.

For example I could owe you £10,000 pounds but you are Greek and worry about the value of your money, so I agree to pay my debt in the form of some cheep plastic granules I can obtain here in the UK.

Mr business man ends up with a bargain commodity that most likely won't devalue overnight and I end up richer than I would have been if I had paid the full value of my debt.

Any government that thinks it can control its economy and the value of its currency is in a time warp thinking Stalin is still head of state.

antrobus

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

You have to realise that money can be switched about across borders, without going through banks.
.....

My recollection is that is exactly how things are done in some parts of the word. What do they call it, hawala, or something like that? As in there's a bloke in Birmingham, you give him £10,000; your cousin in Islamabad goes to see another bloke and gets handed £10,000.

antrobus

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

Chinese money transfer pricing.
If a company owns both the buyer and seller in a transaction it can "adjust" its prices to produce the profit somewhere else. (usually where taxes are lower).
OK HMRC will try to negotiate with the organisation - but its not law it is power politics....

Yes, I know about transfer pricing, and the extent that it's a matter of 'negotiation' between the company and the relevant tax authorities. It wouldn't really apply to either ASDA or Boots though - they're both retailers and they aren't supplied with anything much by their US or Swiss owners. Any 'tax mitigation' carried out would more likely to be in the areas of 'management charges', intragroup financing, that sort of thing.

It's more applicable to the likes of Apple UK, where I'd imagine that there is some kind of agreed price at which all their Chinese manufactured toys are acquired.